Community Reacts to Men Playing Women's Event

Monday, 2 February 2015

Alex Dreyfus, the man behind the GPI and the Hendon Mob's MTT database, took drastic action against a group of female imposters last night.

After learning that 20 men had ante-up in women's event at EPT Deauville, Dreyfus posted on Facebook that he'd changed 20 names to female names in an effort prevent men from joining the action in the future.

The post was later removed, but the issue of men taking part in tournaments reserved for women has reared its head once again as the latest EPT festival got underway. In an article entitled, "EPT11 Deauville: Hands up who's a killjoy", PokerStars' blogger, Howard Swains, took aim at a group of individuals who decided to infiltrate the festival's €200 women's event.

Owing to French equality laws, and in spite of the sneers from the rest of the poker community, the group of males casually exchanged bets as if their presence in the tournament was normal.

On top blurring the gender boundaries in Deauville, Swains also took a moment to lambast another immature group of players. As the women's event was taking place on one side of the tournament floor, the over 50s senior's event was also getting underway.

However, despite the minimum age limit being set at 50+, three players decided they would exercise their right to "equality" and join the action despite not being old enough. The first to flout the rules was Hassan Bitar who is just ten days shy of turning 50.

While that infringement might not be that bad, the next two players certainly took things to a new low. David Salle and Luigi Macaluso decided to completely ignore the rules and buy-in for €500 despite being 40 and 18 respectively.

Although there isn't anything the organisers can do, this kind of practise is one that Swains hopes will quickly come to an end before things get out of hand.

Tuesday is the deadline for all working Americans to have submitted their income tax returns to the federal government and Juicy Stakes and Intertops Poker are set to mark this annual occasion by holding a special freeroll competition featuring a $1,000 top prize.

“We run a lot of higher stakes tournaments for our more hard-core players,” said Intertops’ poker manager. “But since our network is generally pretty soft, we created this series to give less competitive players a shot at winning.”